How To Prepare The Mentor and The Mentee

It is essential to supply as much information as possible to the two most important participants of the programme - the mentor and the mentee - for both need to understand the purpose and objectives of the programme for the individual and for the company. Both also need to understand what is expected of them. The advantages of the relationship to both the mentor and the mentee should be particularly emphasised.

The mentor

The most important aim in the preparatory stage of the programme is to motivate the mentor and help him or her see how he or she can contribute to the mentee's development.

Training

An organisation can run workshops for the mentor suggesting various methods of ‘helping to learn'. A series of sessions might deal with:

• the purpose of the programme

• the benefits of the mentoring relationship

• something about mentoring

• the dynamic nature of the relationship, its stages and phases

• the core qualities and skills of an effective mentor

• practical tools and techniques for helping the mentee

• anticipating and forestalling possible problems

• adapting mentoring practices to particular settings.

It would also provide opportunities to put the skills into practice, through role-play or through tackling real issues in a one-off mentoring environment.

These workshops could operate through brainstorming sessions as well as role-play and critique sessions so that mentors can assist each other to develop greater skills. The sessions would also encourage mentors to act as a support network for each other. Typically, in the UK, the mentor training workshops last one to two days and focus both on building awareness of the role and on raising awareness of key mentoring skills. In practice, however, many organisations now insist that initial training be carried out in much shorter periods. This poses a real challenge for the trainer, who must not only ensure that mentors emerge from less than half a day's training with enough understanding and confidence to try being a mentor, but must also find innovative ways of encouraging them to come back to review their progress. One current programme in the City is building in time for an external coach to sit in on mentoring sessions and provide mentors with a one-to-one briefing on their approach.

British American Tobacco (BAT) adopted a very flexible approach when it designed its international graduate mentoring programme. First, it linked together mentoring and coaching as parallel programmes, training managers in both skills, and training mentees in what to expect from the immediate line manager in the form of coaching and from the off-line mentor. The programmes were encapsulated in ring-binders available to all workshop participants. To customise the programme to the varying requirements of its subsidiaries around the world, the training manuals were designed to be recast as needed into one-day, one-and-a-half-day and two-day versions. The case studies were also replaceable, as needed, with local examples more suited to the national culture. Trainers from around the world were trained as facilitators with authority to adapt the materials to local circumstances. (Some had participated in the original design, as well, to make sure it met a wide range of needs. )

Is it possible to do without training at all? Practical experience suggests that this usually results in a high proportion of failed relationships and severe damage to the concept of mentoring within the organisation. A rough-and-ready rule of thumb is that programmes introduced without any training, or with a minimalist briefing, rarely result in more than one in three relationships delivering any significant benefits to the participants. The fact that any relationships work at all seems to relate to the previous experience of mentoring by the people concerned and to the innate and instinctive competence some people have in the mentoring role. Training the mentor can double the success rate to 6 out of 10; training mentor and mentee, plus ensuring that the line managers also understand the purpose of the scheme and its benefits to them, pushes the success rate to over 90 per cent.

Examine risks

Organisations can help the mentor to examine frankly the potential risks involved in being a mentor. Programme co-ordinators should make it clear to the mentor and the company in general that the relationship is not guaranteed to be successful and that a failed pairing will not reflect badly on the mentor. Indeed, having the self-confidence to wind down a relationship that is not going anywhere should be seen as a sign of the mentor's developmental competence.

Cross-gender relationships

Alert ‘cross-gender' mentors to the potential problems. The discovery that rumour and sexual innuendo exists about a mentoring couple can decisively restrict or even destroy the relationship.

If the two parties are forewarned, they can cope with the external pressures better or adopt strategies to avoid giving encouragement to rumour.

Networking

Introduce the mentor to other managers who have experience in mentoring and who can discuss the various stages of the relationship and the challenges and difficulties that are likely to arise. Organisations can also appoint a senior or ‘super' mentor to counsel and guide the less experienced mentor.

Online training

If appropriate, the company can provide training on demand using e-learning. There is a growing variety of resources here, and at least one UK company is introducing its own e-learning programme in mentoring independently.

Mentoring certificate

For some people, the opportunity to obtain a certificate is attractive. The National Standards in Mentoring document issued in 2000 after piloting with 300 organisations, from companies to schools, is intended eventually to form the basis of a mentoring NVQ, and other formal qualifications are starting to appear. Great care should be exercised in determining the value and validity of some of these diplomas and certificates, a number of which seem to have only marginal relevance to mentoring.

The mentee

If the mentee is to take appropriate responsibility for the relationship, he or she must understand:

• what the organisation expects from the programme

• what can realistically be expected of the mentor

• what the mentor should expect of him or her

• what he or she can do to make the relationship deliver positive outcomes for both parties.

In most of the programmes that I have worked on over the past five years, the style of the mentee training depends very much on the maturity of the target audience. Young people in community schemes, ex-offenders and recent graduate recruits tend to be trained in a peer group. People at more senior level, or who are generally more experienced, tend to be included in a mixed group with mentors. The rationale behind this is first that mentor and mentee will manage the relationship better if they appreciate how it appears from the other side, and second that mentors can improve their skills if they also become mentees, and mentees if they in turn act as mentors. Incorporating role-swaps into the training encourages insight into appropriate behaviours and helps build the kind of openness under which the relationship will flourish. Although it does sometimes happen that an intended mentoring pair train together, training usually occurs before matching takes place - so this provides another opportunity for the mentee to vet some potential mentors.

An additional element I have introduced into many mentee training workshops is a more intensive session on building and using networks. The more adept the mentee becomes at using networking, the more helpful the mentor can be. A good starting-point for developing learning nets is the peer group, which may have all the knowledge the graduate mentee needs to gain introductions to areas of the business he or she would like to know about. Similarly, some skills in career self-management come in very useful.

At a more senior level, the scheme co-ordinator may spend time helping mentees think through the nature of the transition they would like to make and how exactly they think a mentor can help. This both assists in the selection phase and ensures that the relationship can get started with a relatively clear sense of purpose.